1968 to Now: Fifty years later, BOSS still lead advocate for black women at Barnard

BY SUSU RAWWAGAH AND VALENTINA ROJAS-POSADA via https://www.columbiaspectator.com

This story is part of a series on the 1968 protests at Columbia and their present-day implications fifty years later.

In 1969, the newly formed Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters made 10 demands to the college in hopes of bettering the experience of the 80 black women on campus at the time. Fifty years later, BOSS continues to be the lead advocate for Barnard’s now 234 black students.

Founder of BOSS Frances Sadler, BC ’72, now a member of Barnard’s board of trustees, held the first meetings in her dorm room, where she and her friends met to discuss their experiences as black students on a predominantly white campus.

In the aftermath of the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and proposed gym expansion into Morningside Park, BOSS officially formed as a response to the fact that the activist groups leading these protests at Columbia tended to be white and male-dominated.

Though the group was not originally formed as an activist group, by 1969 it had pushed for the creation of an Afro-American studies major, more active recruitment of black students, and orientation programming geared toward black students, among other demands, many of which the College has yet to meet.

Barnard women, both black and white, participated in the 1968 protests, though many were ushered into traditional gender roles, according to Karla Spurlock-Evans, BC ’71. Black women in protests, however, had to contend with even more diminished roles due to both their gender and their race.

“Back in 1968, we were conditioned to capitulate to the idea that black men were going to stand up and take the lead,” Spurlock-Evans said. “Whether it’s correct or not, we were under the impression that perhaps [black] women …

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